When Lester Trott, 95 years old this year, was born in Annapolis, the capital city had scarcely 9,000 residents.
Les and his family, which included two older brothers, lived for a time in Eastport on Duvall’s Cove (or Well’s Cove), swimming in the clear waters of Spa Creek and trapping muskrats to sell their hides for pocket money. They netted big eight-inch-plus blue crabs — called channel crabs because of their size — that had molted and were hiding...

The last thing we wanted to read was Bay Weekly’s ­October 3 story “On a Rock and a Hard Place: The Last Place in the World You Want to Take Your Boat.” Those nightmare memories didn’t need refreshing.
That’s the kind of lament I’ve heard over the past week from people who know all too well the shock and painful aftermath of a hard landing.
Those jetties aren’t lighted. You can’t see them at night. Why...

Compass Rose opens its little new theater with a giant of American musical theater.
Written in 1959 with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein and book by Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse, The Sound of Music went on to win the Best Musical Tony Award.
No surprise there: Music has a
dramatic true story for inspiration, and Hammerstein’s brilliant lyrics and songs sound vibrant over 50 years later.
How does...

What do you do when all hope is gone? How do you keep trying when you know that no help is on the way?
Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock: The Heat) isn’t having the time of her life on her first trip into space. After training for six months to install her communications system on a satellite, she is awkward in zero gravity and nauseated in the vacuum of space.
Her situation gets worse. She’s on a space-walk when debris from a destroyed Russian...

Annapolis may call itself the Sailing Capital of the World, but the United States Boat Shows make it the Boating Capital.
The Sailboat Show came first, introducing Chesapeake Country to in-the-water boat shows in 1970. The Powerboat Show came in 1972. For 40 years, the Sailboat Show has traditionally led, with the boats arriving the first full week of October.
This year the Sailboat Show takes second billing, at least on the calendar.
...

by Sandra Olivetti Martin with Doug Roberts
September 7, 2012
Guess we had another one. Heard it hit Saturday night. Around 10:45pm, a 24- to 25-foot boat hit the Rockhold Creek jetty on its way in. No moon, apparently traveling too fast without using a spotlight and apparently missed the channel entrance light marking the end of the jetty and entrance to the creek. Seems it was moving along at a good rate of speed to get this high on the wall.
The wide...

Every voyage can lead to Scylla and Charbydis. Mariners have always known that monsters of the sea are both real and hungry. Smart — and lucky — mariners live to tell the tale.
That’s the kind of boater you want to be.
Boating safety courses — offered by the wise mariners of the Coast Guard Auxiliary and Power Squadron — improve your odds for steering safely around rocks, whirlpools and other monsters of the deep.
...

Driven by the frenzy of breeding season, deer are coming out of the woods.
From early fall into deep winter, bucks have two things on their minds: breeding and eating — the latter for energy to breed. Normally reclusive, whitetail bucks are out on the prowl. Searching for mates, they leave their thicket lairs and cross open meadows, lawns — and busy roads.
That’s where deer, humans and vehicles meet.
Cars and deer...

Picture a generation of children losing their capacity to play. Picture a school system where recess and free time are disappearing. Imagine an educational mindset that tests its students with greater frequency even as students report growing anxiety and stress.
If your imagination fails, it may be because there was no room for imagination in your school day.
Peter Gray offers an alternative in his book Free to Learn and his speaking tour, which brings...

Like carnivals and county fairs, the U.S. Boat Shows bring a welcome return of familiar pleasures.
So I’m not going to look back at old editor’s letters as I write this week because no doubt I’ve said the same things before.
That’s because I go to the Boat Shows for the same thrills every year.
I anticipate the makeover of Annapolis with the kind of profound appreciation of novelty and abundance Thomas Wolfe...